


mirrors for princes

by voodoochild



Category: The Hour
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Season/Series 01, Alternate Universe - Politics, British Politics, Consensual Infidelity, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Marriage of Convenience, Women In Power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8968648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: Bel Rowley is one of the few female MP's in Labour in 1956. Freddie Lyon is her wordsmith. [Political AU of season one, spoilers for 1.01-1.04.]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fahye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/gifts).



> Incredible amounts of love for my betas: Cher and JP for the Britpolitics, Em and Yvi for characters and cheerleading. Above and beyond, ladies and gentleman, thank you so much.

He hasn't done a crossword since he learnt they hid assassination instructions in them.

Not "since Ruth", he never says "since Ruth", because remembering her name means remembering her. Means remembering debutante balls, climbing trees on the Elms's estate, and the pinched lips of Lady Elms pronouncing him "just a war orphan". He's never asked Lady Elms if, were he her son instead of the maid's, she would be more maternal-minded instead of simply neglectful.

Judging by Ruth, he guesses not.

Ruth was a long time ago, before he got himself involved in decision-making, not decision-reacting. He crafts policy now, sits in corners in Whitehall and Downing Street, reads ministers like books. This one can be swayed this way, that one that way, he cares little for the whys and hows so long as they dance to the tune. If one looks for the piper, they'll find Gaitskell and Crosland, the rest of the Shadow Cabinet.

They might see Isobel Rowley, MP Battersea North. It's hard to miss that lovely mop of blonde hair, the ever-so-carefully styled wardrobe and not-sensible-at-all shoes. Polished and perfectionist is his Bel, running with the wolves, and luckily, most of the Commons thinks her too pliable and boring to worry over.

That's his plan, because no one sees him: Freddie Lyon is just another aide to an MP. Just a boy with too-long hair in an ill-fitting suit, scribbling notes in meetings.

His scribblings are the future. They'll see. His scribblings are just the chisel to the bedrock. 

Bel is the sculptor.

***

"They actually put me on Today in Parliament," Bel says idly, scratching her nails down the nape of his neck. She's always alert after sex, and tonight is no exception: she's already switched on the wireless, lit a cigarette and begun paging through a budget report on proposed council housing in Latchmere Grove. She always looks so at-home in his flat, it makes his chest ache.

He's still catching his breath, but he rolls over, tucks the sheet about him. "One line. Of a four page speech on asylum closure."

"You didn't think it was a good line?" she teases, his shirt drooping off one perfect, freckled shoulder. "We must consider, in the bright and glorious rush of modernization and the National Health Service-"

"Whether we can still justify locking young women away for the Dickensian crime of hysteria - yes, I know, I wrote it. Isaac spilled tea all over it, so I had to redo it before you spoke on the floor."

Bel wrinkles her nose - a habit Freddie finds adorable, but is discouraged by her husband, the great muppet himself. Bill Kendall likes to think himself a political genius; Freddie would be happiest if he stuck to reporting cricket and footy matches on ITV. Bill likes having Bel as a trophy - _"no mucking-about with the Derby, my good members of Parliament, or I'll send the wife to give you a good dressing-down"_ , he's fond of joking, though only once on-air.

It could be worse, Lix likes to remind them. Bill could be the jealous type, instead of wrapped up in his own affairs. He could interfere in policy, thinking it his marital right, could attend surgeries or interrogate her about legislation. Instead, Bel has a mostly-harmless husband whose head seems to be permanently attached to mallet and divots, when it isn't buried between the tits of one of the local barmaids. He has the sense to stick to blondes, and Freddie's got the local hacks in his pocket.

It could be a lot worse.

"Stop frowning over my husband," Bel chides, scribbling notes on the housing report. "That look is only for him, and I much prefer you to forget his existence when you're with me. It's working splendidly so far."

Freddie sighs, flings his arm across her waist and drags her close, kissing the little birthmark on her hip. It looks like a comma. 

"What good is marrying a journalist if he won't actually give you positive press coverage? Everyone says he's ITV's golden boy, he'd certainly have the ears of the board. Why not persuade them to come out to a few events? Run a fluff piece to remind London how beloved you are, Miss Highest Voter Turnout Amongst Working Women."

"I thought we wanted to keep plausible deniability?" She laughs at the look on his face, drops her hand to stroke again at the nape of his neck. "Oh no, Miss Rowley would never use her marriage for political purposes?"

"Not *outright*. God, just once I'd like for him to be bloody useful," Freddie groans, his head dropping to her lap. 

"If you wanted useful press connections, I should have married someone from the BBC."

There's a name they don't speak, but that Freddie has kept a careful eye on. Maybe Bel should have married a different presenter - someone Freddie begrudgingly respects, when he isn't up to his arse in showgirls.

Freddie sighs. "You'll have to do with me. *I* got you on Week in Westminster. I will owe Mr. Brown untold favors from now until Judgment Day, but I got you on next week's show."

The report drops on the bed. "Randall Brown? You went to Mr. Brown?"

"You need to stop being afraid of him."

"I'm not-"

Fuck all, he's awake now. This is a very old argument, and one he should probably be upright for. Pulling away from her feels cruel, but he can't be her lover when they're discussing these kinds of plans.

"You *are*, because you are a sane person, and all sane persons find him bloody terrifying. But he's at the top of Health, he was pushing the NHS through Commons whilst we were at uni, he spent half the war in France dodging artillery shells and the other half wrestling the Tories over the Beveridge Report, and I would bet good money that if you showed a photo of him to Anthony Eden, Eden would go into convulsions. We need him."

Looking at her - nude but for his shirt, hair tumbling about her shoulders, a dull pink lovebite just at the edge of her jaw - he wants to lie at her feet forever, but he loves the great game more than he loves her. His saving grace is that so does she.

"And besides, you're a shit liar," he remarks. "Randall can at least teach you to do something about that, if you're going to be plotting in the back rooms with the big boys."

She shoves him off the bed onto the floor, looks down at him cold and untouchable. A quiver to her voice he *hates*. 

"Why do you have to be such a bastard, Freddie?" 

He smiles mirthlessly. She knows why.

***

"You married the wrong presenter, Miss Rowley."

Randall Brown sits in his office in Whitehall - the third floor, practically next door to Wilson and Bevan - and does not, fascinatingly enough, drink or smoke. His tie is impeccably Windsor-knotted, shoes polished, and he sits behind his desk in a most regal manner. Freddie's done research, of course, but none of his connections ever mentioned any of this. Hell, Lix had simply laughed at him in an appallingly gorgeous manner and wished them luck.

Bel, meanwhile, looks as if she'd like to murder him. 

"How-"

She doesn't get it out, and she stops herself before the stutter begins. Damn it, she'd just managed to get it under control, all the practice for surgeries and speeches helping her build confidence in herself. If Brown sees it . . .

"Your marriage is common knowledge," Mr. Brown says, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "I recall a lovely spread in Vogue about the floral arrangements and your mother's tragic absence." 

"I'm sure Bel-"

Randall exhales in a short huff - is that his version of a laugh? - and flicks his eyes open to look at Freddie. "Best get in the habit of using her surname, boy. I'm no fool, but not everyone will miss the way you lean into it. Or the fond exasperation in Miss Rowley's voice when she speaks of you."

Bel finally seems to recover, that brilliant mind starting to turn again, the clockwork ticking away, sipping her ice water placidly. "I'll convey your compliments about my wedding to my mother in law. Vivian was ever so pleased I didn't stand in her way of a garden wedding. Would you mind sharing what you could possibly be referring to about my marriage?"

Freddie's mind, in sharp contrast, has ground to a halt.

"Figured it out, did you, Mr. Lyon?"

"Am I a boy, or am I worth my surname, Mr. Brown?" Freddie asks, and there, the barest twitch of Mr. Brown's lips in a smirk. "Because if it's the former, you know whose ears I have, and they'd be quite interested to know how the Ministry of Health stopped the veteran's bill in its tracks."

"It didn't have the votes in the Commons."

"I know it didn't. You know it didn't. Miss Rowley - there, how was that? - also knows it didn't. But perhaps, during my monthly chat with my former guardian, I could let slip how truly *awful* I find it that Health would block any legislation that could help our brave soldiers."

Mr. Brown picks up his teacup, long fingers wrapping around the delicate china, and tips it slightly toward them. Downs the rest of it and sets it back on the desk with a faint ring, adjusting the photographs between them. "Hector Madden," he pronounces, inclining his head toward Bel, "would have been far more worthy a husband than Bill Kendall."

Bel laughs. "Is that what you have? A summer fling with a presenter?"

"A six-month affair, Miss Rowley, with a charismatic center-right pin-up boy with no preexisting ideology to speak of. And you the first female MP from Battersea. Labour's new golden girl, heir apparent to your father. You could have done far better in your nuptials if you'd sent Kendall back to the hideous hedgerose-pruning shrew he sprung from."

"You're unspeakably Scots when you're on a tear," Freddie remarks, hoping to deflect attention from Theodore Rowley. The last thing they need is the old man's shadow over this, Bel's had enough to fight without it. "And at least Bill can't possibly be accused of interfering with Miss Rowley's position, seeing as he'd have to have a brain underneath all that hair and cricket to try it."

"Nevertheless." 

Mr. Brown fusses with the photographs again, spacing them out, and Bel seizes on the opportunity. "I was unmarried when I was with Hector. It's hardly my fault that he *was* married, and that he was spectacularly failing to appreciate what an excellent catch Marnie Sherman was. If you're finished speculating on what's past, Mr. Brown, let's discuss the future. What do I owe you for Week in Westminster?"

"Tomorrow, the right honorable gentlemen Mr. Silverman and Mr. Hirst will raise the issues of the proposed death penalty abolition bill and the Purchase Tax on wool cloth. The former is a noble action and one you've supported before. The latter is to stall Parliament before the weekend recess and keep anyone from raising concerns about the developing situation in Egypt."

Bel warily nods. "And you want me to speak out on the anti-hanging bill again?"

"Not entirely," Mr. Brown says flatly, sliding three pens to one side and then the other before lining them up again. "I want you to raise Egypt and the arms trade between Russia and Nasser, and I want you to defend the position on Week in Westminster. Do that, and do it well - and I will see that you are included in the passing of the anti-hanging bill. Quite a boost for your image, Miss Rowley. Do we have a deal?"

Bel's hand only trembles a little, and Freddie counts that a win.

***

"Egypt," Bel mutters, pacing rather distractedly in her slip and suspenders. "Why the hell would I get involved in bloody Egypt? Why would *England* get involved in bloody Egypt? Why would he think I know anything at all about bloody Egypt?"

"ShadCab. The second female in the mix. The youngest by far. If you want to make it to be my M-"

"I'm not going to run MI-6, Freddie, do keep up. *Egypt*-"

She's not going to be dissuaded from the topic, and judging by the clock, he's got another 10 minutes to fix his clothing before the muppet comes to pick her up from work. No rest for the wicked, and he pulls on his trousers, kicking one of her heels over to her. 

"... I'm going to be reading *forever*, fucking hell. How am I supposed to brief myself-"

Freddie yanks his shirt over his head and sticks his head out the door. "LIX! NOW!"

"No!" Bel bleats, doing up her stockings. "Freddie, oh my god, I do not need Lix bloody Storm in here giving me looks about us-"

Lix breezes into the room, a mix of cigarettes and Bandit in her wake, and remarks "If you think I can't spot a clandestine fuck at thirty paces, I don't know who you think you're dealing with. Freddie, sweetheart, you've got lippy on your collar. Go swipe a fresh one from Isaac before the husband gets here. Bel, my darling, *what* are you having convulsions over?"

"Egypt-"

"Oh, you're finally listening to me for once," Lix trills, bending down and handing Bel her blouse. It's damned odd with someone else in the room while they're still slightly post-coital, but well - Lix is Lix. He heads out to find Isaac and a fresh collar, eavesdropping on Lix. "I told you we needed to do more research after Gaitskell nearly called out Eden on it."

"And I recall an earlier lecture about keeping my mouth shut."

"Mouth shut, yes. Brain hopelessly uninformed, no."

It's quiet, and Bel looks mildly panicked when he walks back in. Freddie sighs. 

"Send her home with everything we've got on Egypt and Nasser, she's going to raise it tomorrow in Commons, and then she's doing Week in Westminster. We do this, we get recognition and passing of the anti-hanging bill."

Lix goes curiously pale, and helps bundle Bel up in her mac, fix her hair, and sets Sissy and Ron to compiling the info on Egypt. She doesn't say anything until Bill Kendall has swanned in, made a fuss over Bel, and scooped her up to have a boring little dinner at Chez Auguste, preferring to wait until the taxi drives off to grab Freddie by the ear.

"What," she hisses, "in the hell are you doing cutting deals with Randall Brown?" He pulls away, opens his mouth to protest, but Lix, as bloody ever, is three steps ahead of him. She's the one who terrifies him - if he ever becomes half the political mind she is, he'll kiss her feet in thanks and then hire a full time psychiatrist. "Freddie, don't be wet, bloody no one gets in the Week in Westminster lineup without a word from Randall. Particularly not anyone from his own Ministry, and sure as hell not junior members whose sum total experience in government could be counted upon one's fingers."

There's something about the way she says Mr. Brown's name - he isn't daft, he knows and has reveled-in Lix's seemingly endless connections to half the Commons and a fair number of Lords - that makes him think back to when he first met her. 

Bel's first meeting with the staff, they had lined up Isaac to handle policy research when a tall woman in pinstriped trousers, a shirt scandalously unbuttoned to the collar, and a cigarette tucked behind the cropped black curls at her ear had plucked the schedule from Isaac's hand, patted his cheek, and informed them that they were going to be eaten alive with a side of cream if they didn't "listen while the grownup was speaking".

Freddie had considered throwing her out.

Bel had laughed and told her to get her everything she could on the new Opposition. 

Both of them had choked when Lix had jotted down an address and telephone number in Frognal Gardens. She was old mates with Bevan and Gaitskell, and when asked what the hell she was doing shepherding a first-term junior minister, had smiled rather sadly.

"No sense in focusing on the grand old men. You, my dear girl, are the future. Can't very well let the future drown in her own inexperience. Sit down, we're going to start at the beginning with this surgery schedule, and carve out some time for real meetings."

Back then, he'd been too happy with the gift horse to count her teeth. Now, he squints up at Lix.

"We've been trying to get Bel out there for months, and now you're telling me you knew *exactly* how she could get Week in Westminster?"

"You vetted me when I joined up, Freddie. You know my CV. Friends in just about every journalist pool from here to Marrakech, but *darling*. I only call in favors when absolutely necessary." Lix grinds out her cigarette aggressively into the ashtray by his desk, already filled with cigarette ends. "You don't want to owe Randall, Freddie. Trust me."

"So long as it's me that owes him and not Bel, I think I'll be fine. What we *should* be thinking about is why the deputy minister for Health is concerned about the arms trade in Egypt, don't you think?"

***

Freddie, like any good machinist, knows his Machiavelli, and so he does not advise Bel to hold back on Week in Westminster.

"I'm a junior minister, I can't just-"

She's pacing his floor, having gone to dinner with the muppet and spent half the night studying up on Egypt, now lying in his bed eating biscuits and fighting with him over their next step. He finds her unspeakably compelling when she displays her passion, it's the same quality that got her elected over a two-term Tory from a respectable family but absolutely no initiative to speak of.

"M, darling, you *can*. You've been given the chance to speak on the wireless to the entire country. If you don't personally rip Turton open and expose his complete lack of a spine, I will personally resign."

"He's harmless," Bel protests. "Ignorant, yes, annoyingly so. But harmless."

Freddie scrubs his face with his hands, groaning. "He sat there in the Commons back in February and claimed mental health nurses didn't deserve fair pay! He fights us every step of the way on anything that needs to go through Health. Our Shadow Minister, through his deputy, is giving you _carte blanche_ to call Turton on the carpet about mental health and anti-hanging. All you have to do is keep steady on Egypt and follow Lix's talking points."

"Why the hell *didn't* you ever run for council or Parliament?" It's not the first time Bel's asked the question, but it's the first time he's ever wanted to give her the true answer. "We knew it'd be the populace or nothing, when I ran. My father's help, such as it were, wasn't guaranteed, I was Caroline's favorite, but half the council hated me. I tripped all over myself in my first speech. You would have been far more of a natural, with better connections."

He catches her hand and tugs her down to the bed, kisses her hand gallantly, the way that makes her nose wrinkle, and curls himself about her. Wants to drown in her and her lilac shampoo and her pretty, wide eyes, and that brilliant steel-trap mind of hers. 

"Do you remember that first speech?" he asks her, and she strokes her palms down his shoulders, nodding. "It was at the boating lake, the pump house in the background because someone told you it'd look iconic instead of shabby. You were still living in that awful flat in Clapham, which you felt terrible about and said so in the speech. Someone catcalled, a bloke in green - and you *stopped*. Bel, you stopped and looked right at him and told him how unfair it was that there was so little affordable, quality housing. How you shouldn't have to be posh to have a nice flat, and how you shouldn't have to be so poor there was no other choice. You connect with people, Bel Rowley, and I - probably would have made a crack about his shoes."

"You always remember the best bits," she sighs. "I remember that teenage couple necking the whole time and that goose's unbearable honking interrupting me."

"We went to Flanagan's after. Had terrible spag bol and you drank Pimm's. I stuck to a perfectly respectable brown ale. I told you that you needed me, and I-"

"You," she says, pinning him to the bed and kissing him very distractingly, "quoted bloody Machiavelli at me. And batted your unfairly pretty eyes. I hadn't a hope of turning you down."

_When you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him._

He will not forget this quote, not when Lord Elms (his father who is not his father, because Freddie Lyon's father was Malcolm Lyon, who never read a word of Machiavelli in his life) sat him down at his desk and treated him, for once, like he could be worthy of knowledge. 

"Good. You need me."

Exasperatedly, she nods, mouthing at the jut of his collarbone.

"Yes, Freddie, I need you. Now quiz me about Nasser . . ."

***

She trounces Turton. 

It's utter bloodshed, the moderators chiding her and reining her in, but she refuses to be cowed and lays out point after point in her favor. She catches him in lies about overtimes for mental health nurses, cuts in hospital funding, prison population statistics, and lowering of salaries across the board. She leaves him grasping for answers a number of times. She even makes the editor of the Guardian speechless by quoting one of his own op-eds about the anti-hanging bill word for word.

Egypt does get brought up, but it gets only a few minutes of debate, as Parliament hadn't really discussed it the past week. Bel does get Turton to admit that the arms trading between Russia and Egypt, as well as England's developing nuclear program, will have quite a large impact on future conflicts, so Freddie counts this as a win.

And Randall Brown is as good as his word: the anti-hanging bill passes in the Commons, and Bel's name is prominent in the press coverage.

They celebrate with excellent Indian takeaway and a disco in the East End that Sissy gets them into. Many, many toasts are drunk, and Freddie proclaims Bel the new face of Health. Lix, curiously, is silent on the entire matter, other than a particularly indulgent smirk and the presence of a new silk scarf Freddie is very sure is worth more than his monthly salary. 

(A photographer attempts to get a shot of Bel, first three shirt buttons open and her hair swinging, doing the twist with Sissy and her new beau, but Freddie has him booted out and his film ruined. Tonight is for Bel to relax, and the next photographer to jeopardize that will be hung upon the nearest streetlamp by his pants.)

"Dance with me," Bel says, breathless, and how can he turn her down?

Something slow comes on, lots of saxophone, he thinks it may be American, but it matters little when he has to walk the tightrope of dancing with Bel in public. Enjoying it without compromising her reputation as a married woman.

"You look exhausted," he remarks, as she sways back and forth in his arms. She's always been pants at dancing, but usually, she can retain enough enthusiasm to keep on beat. "Too many fruity drinks?"

"Meetings all morning, surgery this afternoon, two speeches before Week in Westminster, and now the lot of you have dragged me out dancing. You're lucky I'm not asleep in the coatroom atop someone's fur." His mind is already racing, ready to adjust her schedule tomorrow to allow her a bit of extra sleep, but she tugs at a lock of his hair and shakes her head. "Not possible, unless you can reroute the women's health conference from Edinburgh."

"Alas, that is beyond even my powers."

"Tragic, James. Ah well, can I at least kip on the train?"

"I suppose I can allow it."

Lix sways by, on the arm of a very intoxicated Isaac. "I'm off to get this one home. Here's your first errand, Freddie."

She hands him a slip of paper, Mr. Brown's bold scrawl visible through the fold. He raises his eyebrows, and Lix simply loops her scarf tighter and drags Isaac to the exit.

Bel uses him as a balance as he opens the paper to read it.

_To Miss Rowley the steadfast and Mr. Lyon the changeful,_

_My congratulations on a well-executed performance. Hugh and I will be watching your ascent closely - I, for one, would hate to see either of you fall. I shall be in touch about that favor._

_Randall Brown_

The bedrock is finally beginning to take shape.

**Author's Note:**

> \- First off, I hope you like this, Fahye! I know you've been requesting this AU for a while and I hope it lives up to your expectations. I had so much fun writing this universe!  
> \- Bel is based on, to varying degrees, Dr. Edith Summerskill, Baroness Barbara Castle, and Clare Short. Her political mentor, in this universe, where Labour had a bit more power in the Eden administration, was Caroline Ganley.  
> \- The title is a genre of political writings during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, _principum specula_.  
>  \- Randall and Freddie's quotes are from the preeminent work of the genre, Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince".  
> \- I wanted to get Hector and Marnie in here like no one's business - if there were *ever* a woman made to be a political wife, it's Marnie Madden - but sadly, could not. No promises, but I could revisit this 'verse in many ways.


End file.
